John F. Seitz
John Francis Seitz (born June 23, 1892 in Chicago , Illinois , † February 27, 1979 in Woodland Hills , Los Angeles , California ) was an American cameraman . Seitz, in the credits sometimes also as John Seitz, from 1923 member of the American Society of Cinematographers and from 1929 to 1930 president of the organization, was nominated a total of seven times for an Oscar for Best Cinematographer .
Life
Seitz joined Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as a laboratory technician in 1909 . About five years later, in 1914, Seitz went to California and worked for Metro Pictures Corporation , also in the laboratory. Seitz shot his first film as a cameraman for the American Film Manufacturing Company in 1916 with the western The Quagmire . By 1920, Seitz worked with director Henry King on seven films .
From 1920, Seitz formed a team with director Rex Ingram that worked together on twelve productions up to 1926. The cameraman, who worked with Ingram in Nice in 1925 and 1926, married Marie Boyle in 1934. The marriage, which had two children, lasted until Seitz's death in 1979. After he had been behind the camera for more than forty years for about 160 productions, he retired in 1960. He stopped making films, but continued to work and experiment on improving recording technology, so that at the time of his death he held 18 patents for camera and recording technology.
plant
The 1920s
Seitz and Ingram
In 1920, Ingrams began working with John Seitz on the remake of the drama Shore Acres by James A. Herne. In the same year, the film version of Hearts Are Trumps was made in which Alice Terry , Ingram's future wife, played one of the leading roles. A year later, in 1921, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was an adaptation of the 1914 novel Los cuatros jinetes del Apocalipsis by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez . The film, remarkable in many ways, was an instant box office hit, starring Rudolph Valentino and giving Rex Ingram a carte blanche in the movie business. Seitz was able to use the northern light effect he developed during the shooting of this production . The cameraman had studied Rembrandt van Rijn's painting for a long time and used lighting falling from the north onto the set from the side , creating strong contrasts and deep shadows. Lee Garmes , on Ingram's advice, adopted this effect in the production of The Garden of Allah in 1927 and was so convinced of its effect that he made the northern light effect his trademark.
Scaramouche , The Prisoner of Zenda and The Arab were other successful films that Seitz and Ingram made. In the South Sea romance Black Shadows of Civilization , Ingram used his wife Alice Terry again and established a new star, Ramón Novarro . In 1925 Ingram founded Rex Ingram Studios in Nice and Seitz spent a year in France. There Seitz and Ingram filmed Mare Nostrum , a spy story based on Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. The magician , from 1926, was Ingram's last collaboration with Seitz. The fantasy film with Alice Terry and Paul Wegener in the leading roles was based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham . Ingram left MGM after filming The Garden of Allah .
During his collaboration with Ingram, Seitz developed various, simple but up to this point unusual camera perspectives, such as filming a scene through a keyhole or binocular recordings. Seitz also dealt extensively with so-called matte shots. With this technique, a background is first filmed, the film is rewound, and then the actual film action is recorded.
The end of the silent movie era
Until the end of the silent film era , Seitz stood behind the camera for directors such as Frank Lloyd , Clarence Brown and King Vidor . In 1927 he made The Golden Hell , a film about the gold rush on the Klondike River , with Dolores del Río in the lead role, directed by Clarence Brown. Brown, who had worked on the film for a year, was dissatisfied with the result and his male lead actor Ralph Forbes, but considered Seitz to be one of the "greatest cameramen ever". Despite Brown's dissatisfaction, the film became a huge hit with audiences and critics, catapulting Brown to the top of Hollywood's highest paid directors with an annual salary of $ 300,000. For his work on Frank Lloyd historical film The Divine Lady , the love affair between Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton described, Seitz was in 1930 for the first time for an Oscar nomination . Clyde De Vinna received the Oscar for Best Cinematography for White Shadows . Seitz was the highest salary cameraman during the 1920s and the only one mentioned as a cameraman in commercials for films.
The 1930s
During the 1930s Seitz worked as a cameraman on five films by child star Shirley Temple , photographed Mickey Rooney in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1939, and worked for directors such as Sam Wood , Allan Dwan and on six films with Henry King . Towards the end of the decade, Seitz worked three times with director George B. Seitz , who is variously referred to as the brother of John Seitz or a good friend of the director. With director Seitz, cameraman Seitz shot The Doctor and Women in 1937 , a drama based on the story General Hospital by Erich von Stroheim. Due to the low budget, more complex scenes were realized using glass shots , the camera films through a pane of glass with a painted background. In addition, scenes from older films, such as a car accident, were reused.
In 1939 the prison film 6,000 Enemies followed with Walter Pidgeon in the lead role. Also in 1939 was Thunder Afloat , a war film in which Wallace Beery hunted German submarines on the American Atlantic coast during the First World War . In the same year Seitz was behind the camera for another film with Beery. Sergeant Madden , a crime film that is considered one of the low points in director Josef von Sternberg's work. In total, Seitz was the cameraman responsible for around sixty films during the decade.
1940s
At the beginning of the 1940s, Seitz shot two more Dr. Kildare films for director Harold S. Bucquet . Seitz filmed the first film in the MGM series, which comprised a total of 15 films from 1938 to 1947, in 1938. Seitz made his first film noir with Robert Siodmak's thriller Fly By Night . Frank Tuttles Die Scarhand was Seitz's second contribution to film noir as a cameraman in 1942. Paramount had secured the rights to Graham Greene's novel A Gun for Sale back in 1936 , but it wasn't until Warner Brothers' successful remake of the Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor , that filming of Scarred Hand began . The film established Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake as Hollywood's new dream couple and added two new elements to the subject of film noir, that of the "angelic killer" and that of the "chase in a surreal cityscape".
Seitz and Wilder
A year later, Seitz worked with director Billy Wilder for the first time . Wilder's war film Five Graves to Cairo, starring Anne Baxter and Erich von Stroheim , was nominated for three Oscars. Seitz went away empty-handed when he was nominated for the second Oscar , while Arthur C. Miller went to the award for best camera for Das Lied von Bernadette .
Seitz directed the two comedies, Sensation in Morgan's Creek , for Preston Sturges in 1944 , with Betty Hutton in the role of a telephone operator named Trudy Kockenlocker and Heil the Victorious Hero , with Eddie Bracken as Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith . For both films, Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenwriter in 1945. Sensation in Morgan's Creek was listed on the National Film Registry in 2001.
With a woman without a conscience , another collaboration between Seitz and Wilder, one of the most influential films in Hollywood history was made in 1944 based on the novel by James M. Cain . Seitz illuminating the scenes, with their hard contrasts, often overlaid shadows, dark corners, as well as unusual shots filmed through cigarette smoke, window blinds and crushed and blown magnesium, set standards and culminated in another Oscar nomination for the cameraman. The film, which was included in the National Film Registry in 1992 as particularly worth preserving, was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1944.
Seitz and Wilder's successful collaboration continued in the following year. With The Lost Weekend , "Hollywood's first adult, intelligent, merciless view of alcoholism " emerged in 1945, according to film historian Philip Kemp .
One of the most notable scenes in the film is the one in which Birnam is dragging his typewriter down Third Avenue in search of a pawn shop, only to find that all pawn shops are closed on Yom Kippur Day. Since it was unusual to shoot in the original location at the time, Wilder had some difficulties with the production studio to overcome before the scene could be filmed on the spot. The cameras were installed in trucks and in some cases in various shops and follow Milland as he walks down Third Avenue. The resulting recordings let the audience see the street, lying in glaring sunlight, through Birnam's eyes and reinforced the impression of the heat and dryness of this summer weekend and, at the same time, Birnam's greed for alcohol and the disappointment about the closed pawn shops.
Ray Milland received the Oscar for Best Actor in 1946 for his portrayal of Don Birnam , Charles Brackett , screenwriter and producer received the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture , Billy Wilder, also awarded for Best Adapted Screenplay , received another trophy for the best director . Seitz, also nominated, went away empty-handed once again. The Oscar for best cinematography in a black and white film went to Harry Stradling Sr. in 1946 for his work on The Portrait of Dorian Gray .
Until the end of the 1940s, Seitz shot films from the Black Series as a cameraman for various directors . Among others for John Farrow the thriller Game with Death in 1948. In The Big Clock , so the original title, Ray Milland plays a newspaper editor who is chasing a murderer, but has no idea that the real murderer is laying the wrong leads Interpret Milland as the murderer, so that Milland must suspect himself in the course of the plot. The plot itself, typical of a film noir, is told in long shots with complex tracking shots, for example in a scene in which Milland sneaks through the kitchen door into the apartment, discovers the corpse, removes indications of his presence in the apartment, goes back to the kitchen, leaves the apartment, talks to a man in the hall and finally gets into the elevator. Before Seitz photographed another film noir by John Farrows in 1949, Die Nacht has a thousand eyes , he shot The Great Gatsby for director Elliott Nugent , based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald with Alan Ladd in the title role.
A film noir directed by Billy Wilder was released in 1950 with Boulevard der Twilight . In this film, Seitz mainly used the low-key lighting to underline the dark atmosphere of the film. The opening scene of the film, in which you seem to be looking from the bottom of a swimming pool at the body of William Holden floating on the surface , was realized by means of a mirror lying on the bottom of the pool. Seitz was nominated again for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the best black and white camera for his work on the set of Sunset Boulevard .
The 1950s
After the Twilight Boulevard , Seitz increasingly turned to color film. In 1951 he shot the science fiction film The Day of Judgment for Rudolph Maté , together with one of the pioneers of color film, W. Howard Greene . Together with Greene, Seitz was nominated for an Oscar in 1952 for best camera in a color film.
Seitz received a final Oscar nomination for his camera work in Hot Pavement , a film noir by director Roy Rowland , starring Robert Taylor , Janet Leigh , George Raft and Anne Francis . In addition to The Judgment Day , Seitz made another science fiction film in 1953, William Cameron Menzies ' Invasion of Mars .
Seitz left Paramount Pictures after filming The Youngest Day and worked for various film companies, most recently for Jaguar Productions founded by Alan Ladd . By the end of his active career, a number of low-budget productions were made between 1955 and 1960 with Ladd in the lead role.
Filmography
|
|
Web links
- John F. Seitz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c John F. Seitz in the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers
- ↑ The American Society of Cinematographers ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers-4 Writers and Production Artists . 4th edition, 2000.
- ^ The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers-1 Films . 4th edition.
- ↑ Lee Garmes in the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers
- ↑ Kevin Brownlow: Pioneers of the Film: From Silent Films to Hollywood . P. 99.
- ^ Photoplay Magazine, April 1928.
- ↑ International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers-4 Writers and Production Artists, Fourth Edition, 2000. P. 778.
- ↑ William K. Ewerson Program Notes., 1974
- ^ Sergeant Madden at brightlightsfilm.com
- ↑ James Naremore: More Than Night. Film Noir In Its Contexts . P. 73.
- ↑ List of films that have been included in the directory
- ↑ James Naremore: More Than Night. Film Noir In Its Contexts . P. 81.
- ↑ American Society of Cinematographers Double Density Review ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Cameron Crowe - Was It Fun, Mr. Wilder, p. 95.
- ^ The Lost Weekend in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers-1 Films , 4th Edition, 2000.
- ↑ The Lost Weekend in 1001 Films .
- ↑ James Naremore: More Than Night. Film Noir In Its Contexts . P. 167.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Seitz, John F. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Seitz, John Francis (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American cameraman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 23, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago , Illinois |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 27, 1979 |
| Place of death | Woodland Hills , Los Angeles , California |